


Autumn In Particular

by vtn



Category: Canadian Music RPF, Matthew Good Band, Our Lady Peace
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-04
Updated: 2006-11-04
Packaged: 2017-11-17 16:50:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Matthew Good Band break up, Matt pays a visit to Raine in a desperate cry for company.  Some old wounds open up when, inevitably, their relationship becomes a conversation topic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Autumn In Particular

**Author's Note:**

> Please ignore my lack of geographical skills at the time I wrote this, and just pretend it is even remotely possible for Matt (in Vancouver) to pay a visit to Raine (in Toronto). K?

We stopped working about the same time as we stopped working. I remember autumn in particular, when I would lie on the couch with a pillow in my arms, tracing the patterns in the frost with my fingers.

It was one of those days she said, "That band you can't stand broke up." I nodded and invited her to come and sit on the couch with me, both of us too lazy to start a fire.

"I always wanted a dog," she continued, looking out the window, "But sometimes I think it's better just having the neighbors' dog next door. We can go pet him any time we like, and we don't have to worry about walking him."

"Maybe we could live like that all the time," I said under my breath, hating myself all the while.

"What did you say, love?"

"I said yeah, a dog would be too much trouble."

"I know that isn't what you said." A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth and she leaned forward and kissed the feeling back into my lips. I loved her and I loved myself. We slept on the couch that night.  


~

  
Girls in college always eat ice cream to cheer themselves up when their boyfriends break up with them, which in a broader sense of the word is exactly what had happened to me.

Except that I can't stand ice cream when it's cold, so I was eating microwave dinners instead. Or not eating them. My appetite had disappeared mysteriously about four days ago. I was thinking of calling Missing Persons.

I pushed my fork around in the macaroni and cheese and looked out the window. I stuffed some broccoli into the corner of the dish and looked at the carpet. There was a stain on the carpet and I got up to call the cleaners, fork still dangling between my fingers.

A little wet puppy nose questioned my shoes, which I'd started wearing inside since it was getting cold.

"Guess what?" I said, trying to grin. "We’re doing real life now!"

The puppy sneezed on my shoe and I picked up the phone. I imagined if Benji were talking to me just then, he would have reminded me that the number I was calling and the number of the carpet cleaners were two very different things. I would have given him an indignant look and told him to shut his face, then patted him on his head.

"Shut your face, Benji," I said indignantly and patted him on the head while I waited for the ring on the other end and then for someone to pick up.  


~

  
He came into my house along with a balled-up paper bag, a strong gust of wind fast on their heels like a sheepdog. He rang the doorbell, too, some kind of crude parody of the boy you'd bring home to meet your parents.

I was disappointed. I wanted him to be angry and turned-ugly, a critic without direction. I wanted to turn him out. I wanted him to have come just to remind me he still hated me, still thought I was pathetic. Instead he was a haunted, tired poet, and I invited him in, told him there was a chicken in the oven that would be ready in about an hour.

He laughed, shook his head.

"I ate at home," he said softly. I wanted to read it as him blowing me off, saying my food wasn't good enough for him. Instead I read it as an apology. I also read the circles under his eyes, the stubble on his face, the way he couldn't look at me. The holes in his shoes.

"Look at me," I said. He shook his head. "Look at me." He looked everywhere but me—the mantle, the roaring fire, the wind-torn sky outside, the holes in his shoes.

Sighing, I placed my hands on either side of his jaw and turned his face up to meet mine.

"Are you okay?" I asked him. Time hung in the air for a while and his lips moved, giving me a long silent explanation, his top lip repeatedly tugging at a crack in the bottom one.

"No," was all he said, and he laughed a little and looked at the floor again.  


~

  
It smelled like a Thanksgiving dinner in his house, and I had the absurd thought that maybe if you were in love and you had a lot of money, it would be Thanksgiving every weekend. But that was stupid. Maybe he was miserable too. It wouldn't surprise me, not in this world.

"Miss me?" I asked, studying his carpet. Those must have cost thousands of dollars to install. I could feel how soft it was even through my shoes.

"Matt, look at me." I still wouldn't. It wasn't even to spite him. It was just impossibly hard, like there was a magnet in the floor that attracted only my face. "I can tell you're not okay. You…you used to say you hated me. Now you're calling me and saying you think we should catch up, since we haven't talked in a while. We haven't talked, period. We _don't_ talk." My pulse rang in my ears.

"Could you cut down on the monologuing a little bit? I have a migraine. And I still hate you, I just wondered—can I get a drink of water? I think I'm going to pass out on your couch."

My stomach was lurching. I closed my eyes and lay very still.  


~

  
"I think he's out," I said. "He can't be healthy."

"The poor man is starving," Chantal said, putting a hand on my shoulder, twisting the fabric of my shirt. "Do—do you think we should…?"

I hushed her and kissed her chin, under her ear.

"He'll be all right," I said. She smiled and nodded slowly.

"I'm going to the store." Turning on her heels, she gave me a pointed look. "Is there anything you need?"

"Deodorant, maybe." I tried to return her pointed look.

"Watch the oven. It shouldn't be done before I come back, but just to be sure."

"I will." The door clicked behind her as she left. The air got a little thicker and a little tighter.  


~

  
"Raine, your wife's an asshole." He started to say something, but I stopped him. "And yes, I know you thought I was unconscious. And yes, I know you have an unspoken agreement. And yes, I know she probably knows everything about everything and that we sometimes like to hug and kiss even though we always say we don't like each other and we can't be in each other's secret clubs. She's still an asshole."

"I love that thing where you don't let me say a single word," Raine said, leaning on the arm of the couch. "And you weren't completely right."

"Was I warm or cold?" I asked, looking up at him. He grabbed my hands tight, leaving my jaw hanging open.

"You're freezing."

"Oh, you had to check. I get it." I frowned, tried to right myself on the couch. "You can let go of my hands now."

"I'm worried about you." He only gripped my hands harder.

"Let go of me." I turned my head down to the floor, looking up at him through the very top corners of my eyes. He gave my hands a squeeze.

"Matt, I—"

And I did it then. Sprang up and kneed him in the groin, yanking my hands away from his. Then I curled up into myself, folding my arms around my knees, and threw up.

There was a ringing in my ears and over it the low whine of Raine's pained groans. Luckily for me, there wasn't much _to_ throw up. I was still going to need a new pair of pants, but the only things that had passed my lips in the last four days were glasses of water and chasers of sleeping pills, antacids, ibuprofen, aspirin for when the ibuprofen hadn't been enough, invite the friends and neighbors too, and so on and so forth.

"Do you have any pants?" I said, my voice sounding like it was coming from across the room. I peered through my knit fingers and saw Raine crouched on the floor, groaning.

"Fuck you, you motherfucking bastard! Yes, I have fucking pants, but what makes me think I'll let you borrow them? You just fucking tried to kill me!"  


~

  
It hurt.

A lot. Disorienting hurt. I was shouting and spewing swear words at Matt like Tourette's taken a step further, hardly knowing what I was saying.

I took a deep breath. Bent over myself. Crouched on the floor. Clenched my teeth.

"Matt," I said, calming down a little. "You just kicked me in the nuts. Now I'm supposed to be nice to you? I mean, _especially_ since we've been best friends since grade three." Squeezing my eyes shut, I inched closer to the couch. Looking up at Matt, I noticed he was dry heaving into his hand, not even listening to me.

"Am I bleeding, Raine? I could be bleeding," he said with a wheezing breath through his teeth. Wind through leaves. Toilet paper and a metal comb. "Is there blood all over me? I don't want to look."

"You're not _bleeding_. _I_ might be. 'You kicked me in the crotch' thing and all." The pain was slightly less overwhelming, and I was able to ignore it as long as I didn't move, breathe, or think.

"Kneed, actually, and I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too," I said, seconds before realizing how idiotic my reasoning was. Matt laughed.

"You're sorry for what? Sorry your nice couch had to be ruined? Sorry I have to live in a shit-hole apartment? Sorry I—"

"I'm sorry you don't know how to shut your mouth." I rolled my eyes. "Actually, I was just apologizing for—"

"Which was _my_ fault, actually." Matt sounded a great deal clearer than he had before. I looked up and saw he was righting himself on the couch, looking at me intensely. "Or Much's fault. Of course, the handjobs in the public bathroom—well, that was kind of both of our faults."

"And the motel," I added, feeling heat rise into my ears. "Both our faults."

"Which one?" he continued, testily. "Because I think Vancouver was my fault. But Winnipeg was your fault. And Montreal—"

"I blame Quebec in general for Montreal," I interrupted. I laughed, taut as a newly wound guitar string.

Outside, wind and the crackling of leaves.

"I don't miss it," I said. My voice seemed entirely too loud. I remembered cold hands and drug store sunglasses, remembered how when you're riding in someone else's car and they're driving badly you always watch whatever they have hanging from the mirror.

Matt's car had an air freshener with the label worn off. It swung around as he tore through curves. I remembered him swearing up and down he could drive and he wasn't drunk. I remember neither of us was drunk, but for all practical purposes we were DUI.

"You're a liar," said Matt, cocking his head.  


~

  
"I mean, I don't miss it either," I continued. "But you know why? There's nothing to miss. It wasn't even a year ago we were—look, Raine, you think getting married solved everything, and you're right, it probably did, but it's not like anything ever ended. Or started in the first place."

"So it was just a coincidence. Your hand happened to be down my pants. My dick happened to be—." He shook his head, shrugging and sighing.

It was all so ridiculous. I couldn't help laughing a little. I stripped off my jeans, cringing at the smell, and wiped my mouth on them.

"You don't care if I sit in your living room in my underwear, do you? I'll get out before Chantal gets back. Am I allowed to call your wife by her first name? Is she just 'your wife' to me? Just 'Mrs. Maida'?"

"She didn't change her name."

"It was ironic." I leaned on my elbows, bracing them on the arm of the couch. "I'll say I'm sorry too if you do something for me." Eyeing him carefully, I added, "It will make me feel much better."

"I'm not sleeping with you."

"Amazing how you thought that was what I was going to ask you. I'd like a glass of water, Raine."

" _Amazing_ how you were setting it up so that I would think that." He shrugged and went toward the kitchen. "My junk's doing fine, by the way."

"Your gonads are extremely interesting to me, Raine, and so I'm glad to hear that." I raised my voice a little so he could hear me from the kitchen. Then my shoulders shuddered and I dry heaved into my hand again. Maybe there's an advantage to not eating.

Raine came back with the glass of water. Tap water. I could tell. Infinitesimal specks swirled and eddied in the glass.

"Oh, excellent, you got me some with Sea Monkeys." I took the glass and drank, realizing just how thirsty I'd been. I turned my eyes to Raine. "Thanks."

"She doesn't know," he said. He cleared his throat. "Chantal, I mean."  


~

  
"Then you shouldn't have married her," Matt responded, nonplussed, running a hand through his hair. His body told me different, though, when his shoulders did that twitching thing again, like a cold moth, and he clenched his jaw to try not to dry heave again.

"Because I didn't tell her about Montreal, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and the rest of the provincial alphabet? I didn't tell her about every girl I ever slept with, why should I have told her about this?" It should have been too painful. But it was easier. It was the Matt I knew. The one that liked to take people apart, study them from a seat somewhere near their clavicle, and try to pull them down to his own level of self-serving misery.

Matt shifted on the couch, took a sardonic sip of water. "Because, Raine? We're different. I bet when you were fucking those girls, you didn't tell them you hated them. You didn't show up at hotels at three AM, in ten degree weather, to punch them in the gut and then climb on top of their limp bodies and cling to them like—finish my simile for me, Raine. I can't beat 'provincial alphabet'. I'm not even trying." He shook his head. "We're different. You're still clinging."

"Right. You called me and asked to come over to my house, and I'm still clinging."

Matt tensed. "That's _not_ why—" Cut himself off.

"Tell me," I said, finally sitting down in an armchair. "Tell me why you called me." He shook his head. "You're so damn stubborn, Matt. Just tell me why you called me."

"I called you _because_ I thought you hated me," he said, eyes flashing. "Because I thought you knew that someday I'd end up not eating, dry heaving—miserable. You were the only one. Everyone else expected me to be something. I thought, hell, you can't let down a guy who thinks you're the scum of the earth. But apparently you didn't. Apparently you worried." I gaped.

"You came over here for _more_ abuse? You were tired of just abusing yourself? You wanted to feel _worse_? You're crazier than I thought. You enjoy—you love being miserable. It _wasn't_ to destroy my marriage and Chantal's new slipcover after all."

Matt's eyes darted around.

"It was new?"

"No. I was just—never mind. You haven't been eating?" He said nothing. An uncomfortable silence settled between us, jabbing at my sides like table corners. "Vines cling. Something in orbit. Magnets. Barnacles."

"We weren't like _barnacles_ ," Matt said irritably, but I could see the corners of his mouth fighting not to turn upward. "More like a starfish. Or an enzyme. Those cling."

"Remind me never to co-write a song with you," I said. "Enzymes are too far out there."

Matt made a noise like _hmph_ through his nose. "I never said I didn't still think you're a shitty songwriter. At least right now, anyway, while you're still pandering to your record company. Go back to writing about drowning in starseed. Or about little girls who want to kill people."

"You paid attention?"

"Sure, I paid attention. I never insult things without getting to know them first." He looked almost offended. "Or maybe I didn't, and I also base my politics on who I think has a better hair stylist."

Politics. It bothered me how much we agreed about politics. How well we could get along if we only got over the whole 'hating each other' thing.

"I'll get you some pants," I said. I pulled myself off of the chair and climbed up the stairs.  


~

  
Just as I'd finished pulling the pants on, Chantal arrived. There was a leaf caught in her hair. A lot of things started making sense when Raine reached over to pick the leaf out, and they giggled together.

I helped them get the bags out of the car. We had roast chicken and potatoes. I talked about my plans for the future (priding myself in my improvisation skills, since I had to make up about half of them on the spot—this is the problem with the entire country knowing you're unemployed) and what Raine and Chantal were doing for Thanksgiving. About pets and the television saying it was going to be a cold winter and everything else that kept us from having to bring anything up about the relationship between Raine and me or the fact that I might be broke soon unless I went back to the studio.

 _We're doing real life now_. I scraped my plate off into the trash can. It was one of those ones where you press on a foot pedal to open it. Someone in this house, just like me, didn't like touching those revolving lids on most kitchen trashcans. I lay my plate and fork in the sink and cleared my throat.

"I need to get home. My dog's probably starving," I said. I think even Chantal's bullshit meter pinged.

"See you soon," Raine responded. I think we both knew it would be the last time we'd see each other for a long time.  


~

  
Matthew Good is one of those people who needs to be wound every once in a while.

He's down and out again. Messy breakup with the wife (he got married not long after the time he came over, which makes me wonder a little). Trouble in the family. I only have vague ideas.

He took some pills that didn't agree and he ended up in a hospital room. Apparently his ex-wife never came to visit him. Apparently he was near death. _C'est la vie_.

I went to the hospital. BSed my way to his bedside. Sometimes we don't know why we do things. This wasn't one of those times.

We didn't say much. I told him I wanted to know he was all right. He noncommittally thanked me. Grabbed my hand.

Enzymes? Starfish? Barnacles? (I hear they decided Pluto isn't a planet anymore.)

He didn't let go for a while.


End file.
